OPINION: Will Vandal men’s basketball go winless for the rest of the season?

Reviewing the team’s continual losses and searching for a solution

Coach Claus talks to the team during a timeout on on Jan 30 in Memorial Gym where they faced off against Weber State.

This past weekend, University of Idaho men’s basketball took on Weber State at Memorial Gym, and what started out promising ended in another defeat for the Vandals. 

The Vandals started out strong behind sophomore guard Gabe Quinnett, scoring five straight points to the start of the game.  

However, the Wildcats responded with an 11-0 run. With over 12 minutes remaining in the first half, the Vandals cut the lead down to one, courtesy of senior forward Scott Blakney scoring on a spin move. But once again, the Wildcats went on another 11-0 run, and it did the Vandals in before the half even ended. 

After the break, the Wildcats continued rolling, scoring the first eight points of the second half. Ethan Kilgore, a freshman guard for the Vandals, scored six straight points, helping in the 9-2 Vandal run, but it wasn’t enough. The Vandals never found a way to close the gap and ultimately lost 81-62, moving to 0-13 on the season. 

In the 116 years of Vandals men’s basketball, we’ve never gone an entire season without a win. 

With the brand-new ICCU Arena looming on the horizon, the question is: do the Vandals start searching for a new head coach, or do we stick with coach Zac Claus and his current system?   

Rick Sperry can be reached at [email protected]  

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.